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Trailing a tangle of wires, banks of iMacs materialize out of nowhere atop the shiny glass and chrome sales counters in the Nordstrom’s flagship store in Seattle, along with an army of caffeine-infused tech experts who hover around color-coded sticky notes on a rolling glass partition.

This is a “flash build,” a technology version of a flash mob, concocted by the Nordstrom Innovation Lab, whose logo is a lightbulb and whose purpose is to invent new ways to keep the famous retailer ahead of its competitors—in this case, by developing an app, with feedback from curious customers, that lets buyers compare sunglasses on a tablet, side by side.

It’s just one of the many ways retailers are using technology this buying season to separate consumers from their money and to fend off competition from both brick and mortar stores and online sellers.

Much of this high-tech adoption isn’t happening on the shop floor however, it’s behind the scenes in a backend supply chain that is coming under unprecedented pressure. And the holidays will be a crucial test of whether many of these high-stakes gambles pay off.

“The most disrupted area of retail is the fact that supply chains were designed to move products from suppliers to stores, and that’s not how products get to customers any more,” says Nikki Baird, managing partner of the analyst firm Retail Systems Research (RSR). “Retailers are throwing up in the air all the assumptions about supply chains now.”

Businesses have spent the last year refining ship-from-store capabilities, for example, moving products from where there is supply to where there is demand—a bathing suit in Florida, say, that a customer unexpectedly wants in Minnesota.

The Bank of Japan may hold off on declaring the world’s third-largest economy has cemented its recovery at a policy review this week as it waits to see the fallout on activity from slowing growth and capital outflows in emerging nations. No change is expected in the massive monetary stimulus that the BOJ launched in April, which will see it nearly double the monetary base to 270 trillion yen (1.76 trillion pounds) by the end of 2014 to achieve its 2 percent inflation target.

Increasingly bright economic signs at home have been overshadowed by geopolitical risks in Syria and sharp outflows of capital from some emerging markets on expectations the U.S. Federal Reserve will soon start trimming its monetary stimulus. The central bank is thus expected to maintain its view the economy is “starting to recover moderately,” instead of offering a more upbeat assessment declaring that the recovery has already taken hold, according to sources familiar with its thinking.

The two-day board meeting will start on Wednesday.

“The global economic recovery remains fragile, so there’s huge uncertainty on how a sharp outflow of funds could affect financial markets and global growth,” BOJ board member Yoshihisa Morimoto said last week on the risk of a bigger capital withdrawal from emerging economies. The Indian rupee and Turkish lira have hit record lows against the dollar, the Indonesian rupiah has fallen to four-year lows, and other currencies have tumbled as investor sentiment has soured on emerging markets.

Exacerbating the move has been a rush to safe-haven currencies, such as the yen, as investors worry about the risk of United States launching air strikes on Syria.